What else can I call it? Reflections by this INTP expat translator, researcher, cook and software developer living in Spain, mostly Madrid. This is mostly about the little things I think and do, which are quite diverse, but which otherwise nobody would know about.

Sunday, 1 June 2008

Band concert in the park

Caught the end of a concert in the nearby park, Parque de Peñuelas. I could hear the music faintly as soon as I got out the door. Around this time of year, under the trees in the park the city council puts out chairs and invites a municipal band from one of the towns around Madrid to visit. This week it was the “Music Band - Musical Association” from Villarejo de Salvanés, a town well-known to me (from the motorway) as the home of the Cuétara biscuit factory that we go past on the way to the coast. The bands are mainly wind instruments but mostly woodwind, with clarinets, flutes, bassoon, saxophone and some brass, and percussion. The music was a selection of tango, pasodoble, Zarzuela (operetta) and the Ross Roy overture by Jacob de Haan. As an encore they played a “chotis” (Madrid folk dance) and an elderly couple got up and danced. These concerts have been going on for a few years now and I think it's about time the park had a bandstand. I noticed that the council have raised the height of the wall around the nearby outdoor swimming pool to stop the noise affecting the residents of the nearby apartment blocks. They could spend some money on a simple bandstand.